All posts tagged slovakia

It’s starting to get confusing. Two weeks into the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, each night we are faced with a daunting combination of games and math before the relative relief of the knockout stages.

From three consecutive matches an evening and an easy-to-understand league system, we have gone to two pairs of simultaneous matches a night and considerations that need a mathematician to work out.

If New Zealand beats Paraguay by 5-4, then Italy must beat Slovakia by at least three goals to progress to the next round as long as none of the goals is scored from a free kick and the referee doesn’t book more than four players in each match. You listen to the commentator’s math, you think you sort of get it. Then you watch a 0-0 draw and suddenly you have no idea what it means. Read More »

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